freewrite.

"Figure out your views on writing, your views on life," I was told by my writing tutor last week. "They may not be what you expect."

***

I believe in all the cliches---love, beauty, truth--or rather, I want to believe in them. I want to believe in karma, but I've never seen it work to my advantage. I like to play myself off as a cynic, but I'm still ever the optimist at heart. I want everything, and worry I will get none of it. I don't believe in God, except when it's convenient. I don't buy religious rationales for all the horrible things that happen in the world. I try to live my life like its artful, immersing myself in academics and other intellectual pursuits, but I wonder if I wouldn't give it all up for the chance to be truly happy. But I'm basing my idea of happiness on a fantasy because I've never had the kind of relationship I'm looking for. I play out my own neuroses in my writing even as I play them out in my own life--or can't play them out, as it were. I don't know if I have what it takes, if my discipline is up to snuff. Maybe I've coasted for too long.

Because I can't be in person all the things I want to be. Because I can't say what I want to say, so I have other people say them. Because I don't know that I'll be able to live the lives I want. So does that make writing a selfish pursuit? Perhaps. I want to change the world, but to my own liking. I fight for the issues that affect me personally--or have affected--because I never give myself time to mourn anything. I am always looking forward, can never stay in the moment. Plans, plans, plans. "You are not happy." Maybe. Would I really trade it all for convention? My mother did the opposite. But I at least want the chance to fuck it all up. I take up fights that concern me because I want someone to say yes I understand. Why did I write that memoir? Because I needed people to know. Because I couldn't keep it all inside. Because I needed to know who else had had that experience. But no. More than that, I needed lots of people to say "it was not your fault." I needed lots of people to tell me I was strong, to be horrified, to be enraged--to have all the reactions I couldn't/didn't have--from myself or from the people I needed to have had them. Selfish vs. altruistic. Afraid I don't have any original ideas, so I just pop out what sounds good. What will it take for me to get excited?

Obsessions--male relationships. I keep returning to/writing the same ones. Trauma. Female relationships. Why do you do what you do? Beauty/aesthetic. I never slow down, and so do I really experience anything? When I melt, I don't write about it. Do I write the things that matter or the ones that don't? I am afraid to be told "you are not that good." Idealization vs. reality. Sex. Fantasy.

I don't write about happy families.

What rules do you follow? Don't you follow? What do I believe. Convictions. I need to have some more. Be angry. Be raw. Speak your mind.

I cried when I read that memoir in class. Visceral reactions. But I wrote it impassively. My best work has always been in one fell swoop.

"You like to turn things into a story, do you?"

I am more honest with total strangers than I am with you.

This is what I believe. There is no rhyme or reason but what we make ourselves. You create your own justifications.

I like my options. I am afraid of being tied down. Ergo, so are my characters.

I am too transparent.

I worry about dying young. About dying. About my mother, brother, father.

I treat sex like a game I know how to play but have to yet master the rules.

My mother always asked me "what's going on in that pretty little head of yours?" Things which I think but never say. If I say them outloud, that is worse, because the possibility of being rejected outloud would be worse than me not saying it at all.

I still think you and I could have/ should have ended up on an entirely different path. I wanted to kiss you before I left--before you left, that afternoon--but I didn't. I didn't want to risk it all getting screwed up all over again.

I use my characters to try on different persona's, different lives, but it's never that simple.

"So in love with your writing"--is it or is it not the same as me?


What I should tell Linda tomorrow: "I have to start something new. But where/how do I begin? I have trouble thinking of ideas. I used to use photographs. I need some way to feel inspired. I don't want to keep writing the same old thing. Because I think I'm better than what I've been doing. It just takes time to get there again."